
Author 



Title 



Imprint. 



IS — 47372-2 OPO 



AN ADDRESS 




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DELIVERED JULY 18, 1859, 



BEFORE THE 



FACULTY, TRUSTEES, STUDENTS, AND PATRONS 






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■Wk. -cK^'^i^s}^^ ^'' 



SHARON, MISSISSIPPI, 



ALBERT G. BROWN 



PUBliISHED BY REQ,UEST OP THE FACUL.TT. 



WASHINGTON: 
1859. 



-'«**wj 



AN ADDRESS 



SOUTHERI EDUCATION: 



DELIVERED JtJIiY 18, 185t>, 



THE FACULTY. TRUSTEES. STUDENTS. AND PATRONS 



"MADISON COLLEGE," 



SHAEOF, MISSISSIPPI, 



ALBERT G. BR OWN 



PtrBLISFlED BY REQUEST OF THE FACULTY. 



WASHINGTON: 
1859. 



v^: 



%'•' 



ADDRESS. 



Fellow-citizens — Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Southern education is a subject in which we all have the deepest 
interest. In selecting it as the foundation of a few remarks to-day 
I have been actuated by no feeling of unkindness to the North, but 
by a sincere desire to contribute somewhat to the permanent pros- 
perity of the South. If the cause of education has been nurtured 
and cherished at the North until its advantages are universally recog- 
nized, we surely have no reason to be envious or jealous; but rather, 
learning wisdom from experience, we should strive with greater zeal 
to emulate a good example. 

To educate the common mind is the first duty of us all. It is a 
duty we owe to ourselves, our children, our country, and our God. 
To educate the rising generation is a high duty; to educate it cor- 
rectly is yet a higher duty. Every son and daughter should be 
schooled for that position which he or she is expected to occupy in 
future life. If children are dedicated to their country — as all children 
should be — it is vastly important that their minds be so trained as to 
make them in all regards the most useful members of society. If 
they are to live in the South, and follow Southern occupations, it is 
of the very last importance that they receive Southern educations. 

I propose to treat the subject under several heads, and very 
briefly. First, the advantages of education. It sometimes happens 
that uneducated men or women make efficient members of society; 
but more frequently they become drones in the great hive of life, 
subsist on other people's labor, or else fall into habits of vice, drawl 
out a miserable existence, and end their days in penury and want. 
Individual instances I know there are, where men and women edu- 
cated in the highest schools, and in all the erudition of the books, 
have still fallen. But these are exceptions to the general rule; and 
when they have happened there has almost always been some defect, 
some fatal error, in the domestic fireside training of the child. The 
statistics of our prisons and alms-houses show that seven-tenths of all 
the inmates are totally uneducated, or, if educated at all, so imper- 
fectly as to leave the mind almost a total blank. If, then, we would 
have our children become useful members of society, adorning and 
beautifying the walks of life, we must educate them. 

Nothing is more common than to hear it said of a boy, there is no 
use educating him at college; he is going to be a farmer, and if he 
learns to read, and write, and cipher, that will do. Or, if he chance 
to be a little slow, it is said of him, he is a dull fellow any way — 
can never make much figure in the world; give him a plain education, 
and let him go. These are popular but very foolish errors. A boy 



4 ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 

may intend to become a planter or a mechanic; but does it thence 
follow that he is not to be a gentleman ? He may have all the 
instincts of a gentleman without education; but without it he can no 
more play his part than he could act the part of Hamlet without 
reading Shakspeare. A boy may be a planter or a mechanic ; but it 
does not follow that he need not read law, medicine, or theology. 
He may appear dull as a boy, and yet the mind may expand, under 
the genial influence of well-directed culture, until it bursts into 
greatness. Instances are not rare where dull boys, only fit, in the 
judgment of their friends, for mechanics and farmers, have aston- 
ished the world with their philosophy, or electrified it with their elo- 
quence. Nature has given to some minds a quicker perception than 
to others — enabled them with less labor to thread the labyrinths of 
science — to bound, as it were, with an easier leap to the summit of 
knowledge. But nature has created no aristocracy of intellect; and 
our government, copying after nature in this regard, has left its high 
places open to the fullest and freest competition. The humblest 
child may reach the highest honors; the proudest can do no more. 

"Honor and shame from no condition rise, 
Act well your part — therein the honor lies." 

Then, fathers, educate your sons — aye, and your daughters, too. 
Young gentlemen, these to you are precious hours ; these are the 
hours for study, "When you have left these classic shades and gone 
forth into the full sunshine of life, you will have no time to lay the 
foundation of a solid education. Whatever may be your pursuits in 
after life, they will engage, as they ought, your whole time, and 
instead of laying foundations, you will find it difficult to snatch a 
moment now and then to place a stone on the foundation alread}^ laid. 

Give yourselves up to study, not to an excess of labor, but to a 
moderate and healthful exercise of the intellectual faculties. Be dili- 
gent and persevering, but not too earnest in the pursuit of knowledge; 
gather information wherever it may be found — 

' ' Like the little busy bee improve each passing hour, 
And gather honey every day from every fragrant flower." 

It is better to be educated anywhere than not educated at all, but 
it was of Southern education that I promised to speak. 

The children of the South ought to be educated in the South. In 
the great business of education, attention should be given to the 
physical as well as the intellectual development of the pupil. The 
physical development should be that which best suits the child to 
the climate in which he is to live, and which gives the surest guar- 
antee of continued good health in after life. 

It needs no argument to prove that a girl or boy sent to the North 
at the tender age of fourteen or fifteen years, and kept there until 
an academic and collegiate course is completed, will take on the 
constitutional habitudes of that climate, and become as much an alien 
to the South as one born in the latitude of Cambridge or New Haven. 

It is a common error that the climate of the North is more propi- 
tious and every way better suited to study than the climate of the 



ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 6 

South. True we have a greater succession of heat. But the degrees 
of heat are as great in Boston as they are in New Orleans. Our 
winters are open — theirs are ice-bound. Our spring and autumn 
months rival those of Italy, and if we deduct the three months, July, 
August, and September, from the scholastic year — months usually 
given both North and South to recreation — it may with truth be said 
no climate is better suited to intellectual exertion than that in which 
we live. I therefore count as the first advantage of Southern educa- 
tion the proper physical development of the child in its adaptation to 
the climate in which the man or woman is expected to live. 

Next, and if possible more important, is the moral and social train- 
ing which the pupil is to undergo. I do not mean to raise any sectional 
issue, but I should poorly discharge my duty to the question in hand 
if I failed to say that the people of the North, almost without respect 
to party, creed, or cast, have adopted a code of ethics, as regards 
Southern institutions, totally at war Avith our notions of what is right, 
and which strikes at once at the foundation of the social system of the 
Southern States. 

So long as they confined their practices under this code to the ros- 
trum and the forum, it was safe to leave our statement to combat 
their errors. But when they have abased the school-room and the 
pulpit to the paltry purpose of maligning our institutions, it belongs 
to us to see at least that the minds of our own children are not con- 
taminated with the heresies which they both teach and preach. 

That the Northern pulpit teems with the bitterest denunciations of 
slavery I need not prove. That the school-room has become little better 
than an anti-slavery lecture-room, all know who have travelled North 
and looked into the mode of doing things in that section of our 
Union. If the higher schools, colleges, and universities which, to 
some extent, look to all parts of the country for support, are not free 
from these influences, what are we to expect in the neighborhood 
schools where hope of patronage is confined to the vicinage? 

One man fulminates his anathemas against slavery from the sacred 
desk. Another, through the press, denounces it as "a contract with 
death, and a covenant with hell ;" and yet another exhorts the people 
to a hatred of slavery, and implores them to teach their children to 
hate it, in the churches and in the schools. And these are the influ- 
ences by which we surround our sons and daughters when we send 
them to the North to be educated. As well might we send them 
among pagans and expect them to return better Christians as to send 
them among such a people and expect them to come back with sounder 
views on the subject of home institutions. 

Have parents reflected as to what kind of school-books are placed 
in the hands of their children in Northern schools, colleges, and 
universities? I risk nothing in saying that in no single instance has 
an opportunity been omitted in the preparation of school-books at 
the North to put something in hostile to slavery. 

I have in my hand "The Elements of Moral Science,'' by Dr. 
Wayland, President of Brown University. It has been generally, I 
may say almost universally, introduced into Northern schools, and it 



6 ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 

is a fair specimen of the kind of books placed in the hands of 
Southern pupils sent there to be educated. 

On page 206 of the volume before me the author says : "Slavery 
violates the personal liberty of man as a physical, intellectual, and 
mo7'al being.'' On page 207 he says : "If argument Avere necessary 
to show that such a system as this must be at variance with the 
ordinance of God it might be easily drawn from the effects which it 
produces both upon morals and national toealth/' and again : "It 
renders the eternal happiness of one party subservient to the tem- 
poral happiness of the other; and this principle is commonly recognized 
by the laws of all slaveholding countries.^' On page 209: "The 
moral precepts of the Bible are diametrically opposed to slavery;" 
and on page 214: "If the system be wrong, as we have endeavored 
to show, if it be at variance with our duty to God and to man, it must 
BE ABANDONED. If it be askcd when, the answer is immediately." Is 
not this abolition, pure unadulterated abolition; and yet this is the 
standard work on moral philosophy which is thrust into the hands of 
your sons, and daughters, the instant they have crossed the thresh - 
hold of a Northern school or college. But let us return to page 207. 
"Its effects," says the author, "must be disastrous upon the morals 
of both parties, the master and the slave; by presenting objects on 
whom passion may be satiated without resistance and without redress, 
it tends to cultivate in the master pride, anger, cruelty, selfishness, and 
LICENTIOUSNESS." Fathers, do you desire to have your sons believe 
that because you are masters you are proud, quick to anger, cruel, 
and selfish. Mothers shall your daughters learn that because you are 
the owners of slaves you are cruel, selfish, and licentious. If these 
things are not to be, I implore you keep your children out of Northern 
schools. 

But it is not alone in Northern schools that this and similar books 
are placed in the hands of pupils. Here in our own midst these books 
are used. I found the very volume which I hold up before you, in a 
female school in Mississippi. On inquiring whether it were possible 
tlie chapter on slavery was taught in that school as sound philosophy, 
I was promptly answered that it was not, and that in order to prevent 
the girls from reading it, the twenty pages on which it was printed 
had been carefully sealed up, as if there had ever been a daughter 
born into the world since Eve sinned in Paradise who would not 
break the seals just that she might taste the forbidden fruit. I said 
nothing, but I did not think the answer creditable to the Yankee 
origin of the teacher. 

I am not going to combat the errors of Dr. Wayland; they are suf- 
ficiently apparent to a Southern audience Avithout exposition from any 
quarter. But there is one idea running through his whole chapter 
on slavery, which so perverts the truth of sacred history, as to require 
that every honest man should hold it up to public reprobation; and 
that is, that slavery is sinful — search the scriptures through from 
Genesis to Revelations and not a word appears against slavery. Its 
existence is everywhere recognized, and in no single sentence is it 
reproved as sinful. Moses giving laws to the Levites 1,490 years 



ADDRESS ON SOUTHiERN EDUCATION. 7 

before Christ, says by express command of the Almighty: "Of the 
children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall 
ye buy and of their families that are with you, * * and they 
shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance 
for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession. They 
shall be your hondmen forever,^ ^ [Leviticus, chap. 25, verses 44, 46.) 
Paul, writing to Timothy in about the 65th year of the Christian era, 
and teaching after the manner of Christ, whose inspired apostle he 
was, says : ' ' Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their 
owm master w^orthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doc- 
trines be not blasphemed," (see cliajp. VI. Ephes. 1, v. 1.) And again 
about the same time, the same inspired author writes to Titus, "Ex- 
hort servants to be obedient unto their own masters and to please them 
well in all things," (Titus, chap. 2, v. 9.) Paul's letter to Timothy, by 
Onesimus, the servant, while it exhorts the master in the tenderest 
manner to be forbearing and kind, recognizes clearly and distinctly 
his right of ownership in the servant. That the word servants in all 
these passages means slaves, even Dr. Wayland has not denied, 
while such learned commentators as Clark and Scott speak of servants 
and slaves as meaning one and the same thing. Dr. Scott saying, 
" Onesimus was Philemon's legal property" — "his slave." It is well 
for Paul that he wrote to Philemon instead of Wayland, or he would 
have been charged with slave -catching. 

If further proofs are wanting that slaveholding is not sinful, they 
may be found in the commandments and in the sermon on the mount. 
" On the the Sabbath day thou shalt do no manner of work, neither 
thy man servant nor thy maid servant, nor the stranger that is within 
thy gates." "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's man servant nor 
his maid servant." So says the commandments. Does Dr. Wayland 
not see in this a divine recognition of slavery? The Savior on the 
mount, delivering one of his last and most impressive admonitions to 
the people and to his disciples, makes no mention of slavery as sinful. 
If He had designed bequething to his faithful follow^ers the duty of 
preaching against slavery, He could not have omitted an opportunity 
like this. When He was about to close his pilgrimage on earth, and 
called his disciples together at the last supper, it is not admissible 
that He would have failed to reform the sin of slavery if He had re- 
garded it as sinful. But neither then nor at any other time did one 
word escape his lips indicating that slavery was in antagonism to the 
divine will. 

What excuse do the philosophers and teachers of the North give 
for these omissions? Why, in general terms, that the Savior found 
slavery in existence and sanctioned by the temporal laws, and that He 
simply forbore to meddle with it lest He should retard the establish- 
ment of his spiritual kingdom. In plain language, that He found 
slavery on earth and knew that it was sinful, and yet failed to rebuke 
it for fear of consequences. Oh shame 1 that our blessed Redeemer 
should be thus reduced from the lofty dignity of a God rebuking sin, 
to the low estate of a mere man fearing to express his sentiments lest 
he offend the rulers and injure his cause among the people. 



8 ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 

But when He had finished his pilgrimage on earth; when He had 
sated the vengeance of a cruel king; fulfilled the judgment of an un- 
just judge; when He had been crucified, died and had been buried 
and rose again, what then? He appeared to his disciples and said: 
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." 
What gospel? The gospel against slavery? No. He had given 
them no such gospel. Surely at a time like that He could not have 
failed to speak out his real sentiments. His mission was ended; His 
kingdom was established; He was beyond the reach of his enemies; 
He was about to ascend and take his seat on the right hand of his 
Father, and he was delivering his last admonition to his disciples on 
earth. Could He have left them at such a time and under such cir- 
cumstances without a word of warning that slavery was sinful, if 
indeed it had been so. To charge that he could is to rebuke Him on 
his throne. Sinner as I am I stand up for the Redeemer, and throw 
the insult back into the teeth of His unworthy followers. 

No, slavery is not sinful. From the time when the commandments 
were delivered to Moses doAvn to the last act in the dread drama of 
Christ's pilgrimage on earth, the Bible bears sacred testimony that 
slavery is sactioned in Heaven. 

But I have pursued the subject too far already and must return ab- 
ruptly to the question in hand. 

Hitherto I have spoken of Dr. Wayland's book alone, and I have 
done so because it has been more generally introduced into the schools 
as standard authority. But his book is not a whit more objectionable 
than those of Doctors Paley, Barnes, and others. 

You ask me if there is no remedy for the evils I have been point- 
ing out, I answer, there is. It is convenient, easy, and natural. Let 
us have our own schools, academies, colleges, and universities. Let 
us rear and educate our own teachers; and above all, let us prepare 
and publish our own school books. 

Why may not some Southern writer, taking the Bible for his guide, 
prepare a book on moral science which shall supersede both Paley and 
Wayland. 

I pause at this point to pay the tribute of my gratitude to the late 
Reverend Dr. Smyley, of our own State, who, twenty-five years ago, 
published a most learned, able, and instructive treatise on slavery; 
and to Mr. Fletcher, of Louisiana, who, more recently, in giving his 
' ' Studies on Slavery " to the public, has effectually spiked the artil- 
lery of the abolition divines on this subject. Dr. Thornton, the 
President of the college, deserves our thanks for a not less able and 
instructive work. If one or all of these volumes could be reduced to 
the size of an ordinary text-book, it could not fail to become standard 
authority in all our schools on the subject of slavery. 

But it is not alone on the subject of moral science that Northern 
teachers poison the minds of Southern youth. They have reduced 
imposture to a system, and scarcely a book of any description is in- 
troduced into their schools that does not in some of its parts contain 
a blow at slavery. It is useless to add that it is little short of self- 
abasement for us to patronize either the books, their authors, or those 
who use them. 



ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 9 

It may be said that difficulties, and some suppose insuperable diffi- 
culties, interpose to the establishment of proper schools and semina- 
ries of learning in the South. This is a popular error which I am 
but too happy to combat. I have already answered the objection as 
to climate, and 1 now see but one obstacle in the way, and that is the 
want of will. Let Southern parents cease to send their sons and 
daughters to the North and resolve to build up schools and colleges at 
home and the work is done. 

I know that experiments have failed in our own State, and I know 
the cause. Jefferson College was the first endowed in Mississippi. 
Mr. Jefferson, the great friend of home instruction, was its patron. 
It M^as incorporated in 1802 by the then territorial legislature of 
Mississippi, and in the following year Congress made to it a grant of 
one township, or about twenty-three thousand acres of land. Had 
the resources of this college been husbanded, and its usefulness recog- 
nized and encouraged, it might have dispensed a vast amount of learn- 
ing, and boasted to-day of an endowment equal to half a million of 
dollars. Instead of this it has languished for half a century — ^^starved 
amidst teeming wealth and gorgeous luxury. Its funds have been 
squandered, and to-da}^ it almost gasps for breath. Why has this 
been? Those who lived under the very shadow of the college 
refused to succor it; allowed its money to be wasted, and sent their 
sons and daughters to the North to be educated. In the thirty-eight 
years from 1802 to 1840, there were incorporated no less than one 
hundred and ten academies and colleges in Mississippi, male and 
female. Most of them had a fitful existence and then went down to 
that general receptacle of odd and useless things, " the tomb of the 
Capulets." The cause is obvious — the children of Mississippi could 
only be educated at Northern schools, of less merit than our own. It 
is pleasant to know that wiser councils are likely to prevail in future. 
Appearances indicate that the people appreciate the folly of their 
past course, and are prepairing to adopt the only policy which can be 
efficient in remedying the evils so universally admitted and complained 
of. "We must have our own schools, and to give them the highest 
degree of usefulness we must educate our own teachers, and prepare 
and publish our own school books. 

Much has been done in the last fifteen years to build up schools in 
the South and especially in Mississippi. I shall not be thottght in- 
vidious if I mention a few which occur to me at the moment as 
highly deserving of popular favor; others of equal merit I know 
there are in almost every part of the State. The State University, 
I need hardly say, takes the lead; well endowed, supplied with a 
learned and experienced faculty, and being under the immediate pat- 
ronage of the State, it has the ability to produce scholars equal in 
every respect to those of Harvard or Yale. It cannot be many years 
before the success of its alumni will place it in the front rank of 
American institutions of learning. 

Every honor is due to the founders and supporters of Oakland 
College. Wrecked in its pecuniary resources in the general crash of 
1837-'40, its generous patrons came forward and with a liberality 



10 ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 

unparalleled in similar cases re -endowed it and cheered it on in its 
career of usefulness. I but echo the common sentiment when I say 
it has nobly met the hopes of its friends. The success of its gradu- 
ates has already vindicated the fidelity, learning, and ability of its 
professors. 

The Old Mississippi College, around the walls of which my affec- 
tions cling, and beneath whose sylvan shades there lingers yet so 
many recollections of boyhood's happy hours. What shall I say of it? 
Chartered in 1826, and never endowed, it lingered for nearly twenty 
years dispensing all the benefits which such an institution could dis- 
pense. It went down because the great mind and greater heart of 
Daniel Comfort, its venerable and beloved president, unaided, could 
sustain it no longer. When it lingered, I was sad; when it fell, my 
heart went with it to the tomb ; when it rose again, I felt a thrill of 
real joy sweep athwart my bosom. Long may it survive under its 
present management, and may its pupils of to-day be even more suc- 
cessful in life than he of 1829-31, who to-day pauses in his speech 
to pay the tribute of his gratitude to its former usefulness. 

The colleges, academies, and schools, at Corinth, Holly Springs, 
Columbus, Aberdeen, Macon, Lexington, Grenada, and other places, 
including Zion Seminary and Salem High School, have all contributed 
largely to the general sum of scholastic intelligence. 

I would not be invidious, and I am sure the venerable president of 
this college and his learned associates would not accept applause be- 
stoAved at the expense of other institutions. It is but just to say that 
Madison College was founded amid difiiculties that would have ap- 
palled weaker hearts than those of the brave men who nurtured it in 
its infancy. Commencing its career in obscurity, without endowment 
and almost without patronage, it has struggled on, rising by slow de- 
grees, until it has reached a position equal to that ol its more favored 
sisters. It is but due to its patrons to say they have contributed 
largely to its success. But the first honor belongs to its president. 
I know something of the embarrassments which surrounded him when, 
without money and almost without friends, he undertook the difiicult 
task of founding this college. His heart was in the work, and with- 
out pausing to count the obstacles in his way, like a true soldier, he 
marked the point of victory, and then marched boldly to that point. 
The people of this community, the people of Mississippi, the friends of 
Southern education everywhere, owe him a debt of gratitude which 
they can never fully repay. The weight of accumulating years fast 
gathers upon him. In a little while the places that know him now shall 
know him no more forever. When he passes away no storied urn may 
receive his ashes, no stately obelisk may rise to mark his resting 
place, but he will live in the affections of this people, and the children 
of parents yet unborn will bring the offering of their tender hearts 
and lay them on a common pile, and thus rear a monument to his 
memory more enduring than brass and more solid than marble, for he 
is and has been the friend of Southern education. 

All honor to President Thornton. He blends in beautiful harmony 
the double characters of a teacher of youth and a disciple of Christ. 



ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 11 

In the school-room he has taught your children how to live, and in 
the sacred desk he has taught them how to die. May the evening of 
his days be gilded with a little of that resplendent glory which awaits 
him in another and a better world. 

The schools of the present day are worthy of commendation, and 
they give augury of a better and more brilliant future; but the good 
work is not half begun. We want, and we must have, the means of 
education brought within the reach of ever}^ child — society demands 
it — the State demands it — Christ's kingdom on earth demands it. We 
want common schools in every neighborhood ; we want academies, 
colleges, and universities in three-fold the numbers that we have 
them now; and above all we want normal schools for the education of 
teachers, male and female. 

It is idle to talk of Southern education so long as we borrow or hire 
our teachers from the North. We rear and educate our sons for the 
law, medicine, the mechanic arts, and divinity, but we seldom train 
them for the lofty profession of teaching ; we teach our daughters to 
adorn the drawing-room, but we never teach them to adorn the 
school-room. We get our teachers as we get our dry goods — from 
the North. Surely this ought not to be. A competent teacher gene- 
rally is not, and certainly never ought to be, a merchantable article. 
If he is trained to his profession, and is every way competent to dis- 
charge his duties, he ought to find employment at home. 

We may have pettifoggers in law, empirics in medicine, and peda- 
gogues in the schools, but if we would command the highest order of 
excellence, we must train the young mind while it is yet susceptible 
and easily moulded. No man ever reached the acme of a profession 
who was not trained to it, or who did not woo it as a labor of love. 
The man Avho teaches only for a living or to get the means for em- 
barking in some other business, is unfit for the profession of a teacher. 
I shall not undertake to draw the character of a perfect teacher, but 
I may mention some indispensable requisites. He should be moral 
beyond reproach, discreet, patient, and self-sacrificing: But first of all 
he should be educated for the profession, and then follow it as his first 
and only love. If we would have such teachers we must make them — 
they are not to be hired, bought, or borrowed. 

We can never have proper school books until we educate our own 
teachers. The learned men of every profession write the books for 
that profession. We do not expect books on theotogy from lawyers, 
nor books on law from preachers. If we want school books we are to 
look to teachers for them. We all know how impure the fountain at 
the North has become, and can we expect that the stream which it 
pours through the South is to be otherwise than impure ? 

Let no one suppose that I am trying to fan the flames of sectional 
discord, I am only trying to protect the minds of Southern youth 
from the contaminating influences of Northern teaching. The 
Northern parent does not send his sons or daughters to Southern 
schools, and of the few school books written by Southern authors, I am 
not aware that a single one has found its way, to any extent, into the 
schools of the North, and yet no one thinks of charging the Northern 



12 ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 

people with being sectional. They have their own schools, educate 
their own teachers, write their own books j and why should not we ? 

To have the policy I have indicated carried into effect, the public 
sentiment of the South must be aroused to a full appreciation of the 
dangers springing from the present system. The legislation on this 
whole subject is far behind the public wants, but it is up to, if it is 
not in advance of public sentiment. The subject is one which con- 
cerns every citizen; and when every citizen, or even a very large 
majority shall determine to have Southern schools, Southern books, 
and Southern teachers, the work will almost have been accom- 
plished. 

I forbear to urge many considerations which appeal powerfully to 
the South for the support of this policy. I might point to its 
economy in the saving of vast sums now expended at the North by 
the children of Southern parents. I might appeal to Southern 
parents not to expose their children to gibes and taunts on account 
of their parents owning slaves. I might show how utterly unworthy 
of your support a Northern professor is who teaches your son that 
you are a tyrant and a brute because you own slaves; and then how 
cordially that professor must despise your want of spirit in paying 
him for thus corrupting the fountains of your child's affection. But 
to pursue the subject through all its bearing, and to treat it in all its 
aspects, would require a tax on the patience of this audience which, I 
fear, they would not bear. 

A word to my young friends before I close. You are about to 
enter that devious path which I have trod before you. Standing to- 
day beyond the meridian of life, and looking through the vista of the 
past to my school-boy days, I feel competent to give you a word of 
caution as to the cliffs and quicksands and other rugged places you 
will encounter in your onward march. 

You must not assume that to graduate is to be educated. I feel 
justified in saying you have laid in your collegiate course here a 
solid foundation; but if you fail to build on it, the accumulating dust 
of future years will settle upon it — efface and finally obliterate it. 
If you would succeed in life, triumph over every difiiculty, make 
it a rule to learn something new and valuable every day. 

Do not assume that because your alma mater is not dignified with 
the high name of Yale, Harvard, or Princeton, that your education 
therefore less fits you for the duties of life. Education does not bring 
success; it only supplies the means Avhereby you may command suc- 
cess. The solid work you must do yourselves, at the right time and 
in the right way. 

In all your intercourse with men be natural. Remember that your 
Creator has stamped upon each of you a character as distinct as the 
features that mark your several faces. You may improve that 
character by cultivation, or you may injure it by neglect; but you 
can never change it. 

"The leopard cannot change his spots, nor the Ethiopian his 
skin." Every man and woman must fulfil that destiny in life for 
which nature designed them. The easiest and smoothest way to do 



ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 13 

it is to follow instead of trying to reverse the decrees of nature. 
Poets, philosophers, orators, statesmen, and heroes were all made in 
heaven ; so were all those Avho throng the humbler walks of life. 
Men fail because they aspire too high, or seek success where nature 
never designed that it should be found. " Know thyself ;" aspire, 
but not too high ; study first to know the design of your creation, 
and then labor to fulfil it. 

Have an object in life, and march to it with a bold and steady step 
and by a direct line. 

You will find a thousand friends to assist you in the straightfor- 
ward path of duty where one will follow you through the tortuous 
windings of uncertainty, indirection, and deceit. 

Be not too sanguine of success. Remember 

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 
Man never is but always to be blessed." 

And never allow yourselves to be cast down by defeat; labor vincit 
omnia. A great captain who had been overthrown in battle lay 
musing on the past, and straining his mental vision to see if there 
was anything but darkness visible in the future: a little spider, 
weaving its web, six times had almost succeeded, and six times it 
had fallen. Undismayed by defeat, the insect still insisted on vic- 
tory, and the seventh time it succeeded. The great warrior, inspired 
by the incident, rose, shook off his despondency, sounded his bugle 
notes, called again to arms, and was victorious. You should never 
be less heroic than the insects, nor ashamed to draw inspiration from 
a source that gave vigor to manhood and taught chivalry how to 
snatch victory from the fangs of defeat. 

Yield not to temptation. To-day you stand beneath the shadow 
of your alma mater. Its fostering care has shielded you from harm. 
To-morrow you will stand on the threshold of active life. Then two 
divinities will appear. One will point you to an easy declivity, 
strewn with garlands of the rarest beauty, beset on every side with 
gems and precious stones, and spanned at intervals with rainbows of 
surpassing brilliancy. Follow it, and it will lead you down to ruin. 
The other will point you up a rugged way, winding amid cliffs and 
brambles, strewed with dangers and beset with difficulties at every 
step, covered with shadows, and lighted only with the flickering rays 
which hope ever and anon darts through the general gloom. Follow 
it, and it will lead you on to fortune. The first is temptation, wreathed 
in smiles; the other duty, clad in sombre habiliments. Choose ye 
to-day which divinity shall be yours. 

Whatever difficulties beset you in life, be faithful to every trust. 
Let fortune frown or fortune smile, remember that we are the depend- 
ent creatures of an overruling and all-wise Providence ; that he can 
build up and he can pull down; that he assuredly will, in his own way 
and in his own good time, reward virtue and punish vice. Love your 
country! The man who is not true to his country, at all times and 
under all circumstances — who permits the fires of patriotism to 
smoulder on his heart, is fit only for "treason, strategems, and 



14 ADDRESS ON SOUTHERN EDUCATION. 

spoils." Next to the God of thy creation worship truth; lock it up 

in your hearts; make it the companion of your daily walks; be guarded 

by its councils; never admit that it can depart from you or you from 

it. In short — 

"Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
Thy God's, and truth's ; then if thou fall'st 
* * thou fall'st a blessed martyr." 

If I have failed, my friends and fellow-citizens, in meeting your 
expectations to-day — if I have fallen beloAV the standard you had 
fixed for an advocate of Southern education, be assured, at least, I 
have felt something of that earnest zeal which prompts a loyal son of 
the sunny South to vindicate, as best he may, the true interests of his 
own section. I am a Southron, but I rejoice in the prosperity of the 
whole country. And though New England may have wronged us, I 
rejoice in her prosperity. I rejoice that she has carried the blessings 
of education home to every family. In warning you against the per- 
nicious teachings of the Northern schools, I must not be understood 
as deprecating the existence of those schools. Let them live for- 
ever. They have strewn the blessings of education along the path- 
way of countless thousands. I would reform, but not destroy them. 
Their blessings, I admit, are manifold, but their teachings, I insist, 
are not such as should be given to Southern children. 

My heart is with the South. She is the mistress of my idolatry. I 
am a Southron to the manner and to the manor born. To me the 
rising sun kisses her hill-tops with a sweeter smile ; and setting, he 
gilds her brow in a brighter diadem. Her lofty mountains and her 
broad rivers, her fertile plains and her genial climate, her noble sons 
and her fair daughters — all, all have a charm for me possessed by no 
other land. Peerless queen, the kingdoms of the earth court thy favor; 
commerce lays its sceptre at thy feet ; science pays thee homage ; 
philosophy respects thy genius; and grim-visaged war unbends his 
brow at thy command. How long, my country, will you submit to 
the gibes of your enemies, or turn in silent scorn from those who up- 
braid you! Be true to thyself. March home to thine own glorious 
destiny. Educate thy children. They will throw around thee a ram- 
part solid as adamant and high as the everlasting hills. Sons of the 
South, be true to your country. It is the home of chivalry, of heroes, 
and of statesmen. Daughters of the South, be true to the South. 
Throw around it the genial influence of your deep devotion. It is 
"the home of the free, and the land of the brave." glorious 
country — 

"Have you a son with soul so dead 
As never to himself to've said 
You are my own, my native land?" 



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